Rest, Patriot, your work is done. It is done with honour.
The winds of history will spin the tales of Brendan Hughes.
You carried your cross well.

Bill Ashe • 24 February 2008

The Blanket just set up a lot of Brendan Hughes Writings on their website. Reading through his thoughts is a trip a lot of us thought was our last battle, as where do we sit today?

Oh how much was lost to stop these tears. Yet they flow, they flow red, for tears from the heart flow that way. The hope of Freedom has slipped away, when we can look back and say 1968 were the good old days, where slingshots were the weapons
to strike at the British foe; that wall that read FREE DERRY was the most hopeful light we had. We reached over to America and ask could we borrow, from the brave Blacks, the slogan "WE SHALL OVERCOME."

The Volunteers stood their ground and fought them with the courage of Shane O'Neill. Too bad some leaders of today don't have his negotiation skills.

The thing that saddens me the most is not the cold open grave, or the spin that's put on his later thoughts, but the lads from H-Block that will meet him and ask that same old question, "How is dear old Ireland?" How does he
explain McShane and Donaldson who took the Queen's shilling, and that their paymasters were now the same as what
Sinn Fein Members of GFA are taking? How they work hand and hand with the very people that incarcerated the
Volunteers?

I had hope for this GFA and was sure Adams knew the best. The question is, where are we today? What
have we today? "Peace is the way forward! All you want is to go back to war!" "Brendan was a good man, just too bad
he was wrong"? "Sinn Fein will bring change!" We hear it all, they want us to feel guilt, not hope.
All this verisimilitude to take us on a long journey to nowhere?

Brendan didn't change, because some things hold true to their beginnings. Sinn Fein wanted total change. Not just
political change, or social change. They wanted a change in principles. That boat won't float in Republican waters.
We gave up articles 1 and 2 of the Irish Constitution, which gave claim to Ireland and all her territorial islands. Which
is now being used against any claim on Rockall. Are the people in Northeast Ireland more or less British subjects today?

We now accept British control over the Northeast of our Nation. Where is there any fruit from the sacrifice of the seeds the
Volunteers planted? Squandered away to mere chuckles and a pat on the back, in the British Halls of Stormont.

Like the
English Pope who gave Henry the right to invade Ireland, Sinn Fein has no right to give away something that is not theirs
to give. For the Irish, the British flag is not a concoction of crosses, but a web of deceit that Sinn Fein takes pleasure in
jumping in and out of like a trampoline used by the castle jesters. The Cause can't be used as their agenda and their agenda is not the Sacred Cause!

To honour Brendan we must hold true to the undying devotion he held to the Cause of
the Irish Nation. If, not what a farce our patriotism is! There are a lot of good people who support the GFA, some in my own family. I begrudge them not. The same flame burns in
their heart. I have no right to question their heart, but I must question my own. I must question the pipers when I hear
a strange tune. Who will pen the song for someone who so loved his land? How long will we have to wait to hear the
the volley of shots over his grave to give him final rest?

The lonely Piper's tune like the Banshee cry,
Tells us of another soldier that dies
To join those who brave in battle fell,
And all those young lives were spent
In many a loathsome cold prison cell.

When the winds of honour call out their every name
And for her liberty complete we will not lose
Those who fought for glory for that land to gain
None will ring clearer then that of Brendan Hughes